Last year's tsunami disaster in Japan clouded the nation's nuclear future, idled its reactors and rendered its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the industry's plan to produce even more has raised a red flag.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan cautioned North Korea Friday to give up its policy of confrontation, warning it would face a "firm response" if it conducted another nuclear test or any new provocations.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is traveling through Asia this week, determined to show the U.S. is serious about shifting its focus to the region, amid growing worries about China's increasingly aggressive posture and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

A U.S. think-tank has published satellite images which it says underscore suspicions that Iran is trying to destroy evidence of possible nuclear weapons-related research at a site that U.N. inspectors have not been allowed to visit.

Iran's enrichment of uranium to 20 percent "is our right" and "is not a step towards a bomb," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an interview with the satellite television network France 24.

For the second time in a week, Pakistan today successfully test fired another nuclear- capable Hatf-VIII cruise missile with a range of more than 350 km, the latest in a series of tests of missiles that can hit targets within India.

RUSSIA/FSU/EUROPE

Trident: is Coalition avoiding the debate that could blow it apart?The Week

LAST WEEK the House of Commons was informed that "the Ministry of Defence has signed contracts, worth about £350 million (excluding VAT) for the first 18 months work on the assessment phase of the Successor submarine programme".

New US battle guidelines partly designed to counter the military challenge from China are attracting strong criticism at home and abroad as unnecessarily provocative of one of America’s strongest economic partners.

India recently inducted a leased Russian Akula-class nuclear submarine into its naval fleet, rechristening it Indian Navy Ship (INS) Chakra. This will be the Indian navy’s second such stint with a submersible nuclear vessel: In 1987, India leased a Charlie-class nuclear submarine for three years from the Soviet Union.

Earlier this month, Global Zero’s U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission, chaired by former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, issued a report reevaluating US nuclear strategy and force posture. In the two decades since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not significantly altered its approach to nuclear deterrence. Although the United States has retired thousands of nuclear weapons since the Cold War, it still maintains a nuclear arsenal designed to promptly destroy Russia’s ability to wage nuclear war. The report highlights a growing consensus that such a posture does not comport with the 21st century security environment and is also financially unaffordable.